By combining state-of-the-art AI language models and brain scanning technology, scientists are uncovering how meaning is constructed in the brain, and how this might go awry in psychiatric disorders A small study, involving 26 people with schizophrenia and 26 without, asked participants to name as many words as they could either belonging to the category “animals” or starting with the letter “p”, in five minutes.
“Until very recently, the automatic analysis of language has been out of reach of doctors and scientists. However, with the advent of artificial intelligence language models such as ChatGPT, this situation is changing,” said Matthew Nour, of UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology and University of Oxford.
“We think that with the rapidly advancing AI language models, there is a good chance we will start seeing AI-powered tools in the psychiatric clinic within the next 10 years.“Initially, these will be used to monitor response to treatment – such as how someone’s speech might change after starting an antidepressant – and present additional information for the clinical team to consider, as opposed to them making the diagnosis by themselves,” he said.